The present invention relates generally to conveyorized apparatus and methods for cooking foods and, in particular, to such apparatus and methods adapted for use in a commercial restaurant setting.
The grilling or barbecuing of foods, particularly meats such as hamburgers, steaks, chicken pieces, and the like, over a charcoal fire is considered by many people to be preferable to other methods of cooking because of the smoked wood flavoring charcoal grilling imparts to the food. Disadvantageously, however, charcoal grilling is generally unsuited to use as a cooking method in restaurants and other commercial settings. Because of the difficulty in regulating the temperature of a charcoal fire and the additional need to manually attend to the turning and modulation of food cooking over a charcoal fire, a significant level of skill is required to ensure consistent repeatable cooking results. Therefore, while charcoal grills would generally be desirable to use in fast-food hamburger establishments, such grills are generally unsuitable to such cooking because of the unskilled kitchen labor normally utilized in such establishments. Additionally, true charcoal has a relatively short life, typically only a couple of hours, before becoming fully combusted and requiring replenishment of fresh charcoal, which further complicates the ability of a commercial establishment to maintain a generally uniform cooking temperature and consistent cooking results over an extended period of time.
Hence, restaurants and other commercial establishments, especially fast-food hamburger restaurants, have largely ceased to grill foods over a true charcoal fire. Instead, many such establishments currently use gas-fired and electric grills, often with so-called "lava" rocks or other permanent briquettes which are heated by gas or electric burners to vaporize renderings and drippings from the food in a similar manner to that which characteristically occurs during charcoal grilling. While such grills overcome most of the disadvantages of charcoal grilling, they decidedly lack the foremost advantage of charcoal cooking, i.e., imparting a distinctive smoked wood flavoring to the food. Still other commercial restaurants utilize more sophisticated conveyorized cooking apparatus to provide an even higher level of cooking consistency, while at the same time substantially eliminating any need for skilled labor in the operation of such equipment. The principal disadvantage of such conveyorized equipment is that the cooking results are even less simulative of charcoal grilling than that achieved with electric and gas-fired grills.